Sunday 22 February 2009 09.44 EST
First published on Sunday 22 February 2009 09.44 EST

Jade Goody, the terminally ill reality TV star who has spent much of her adult life courting publicity, got married today behind a cordon of security designed to keep at bay the watching media.

The 27-year-old wed Jack Tweed this afternoon at a country house hotel in Essex. Goody is said to have only weeks to live after cervical cancer spread to other organs.

The ceremony, held before a mixture of friends, family and an assortment of showbusiness stars, took place behind closed doors as part of an exclusive magazine and television deal that Goody hopes will secure the financial future of her two young sons.

Goody's publicist, Max Clifford, addressed the crowd of media camped at the gates of the Down Hall hotel after the ceremony took place. "They are now man and wife," he said. Goody, who was taken ill last night amid the strain of the preparations, had been able to stand up for all but the final five minutes of the 45-minute wedding, he added.

"It was just a very beautiful, very moving service," he said. "It was just a very heart-rending, happy ceremony with lots of tears and lots of smiles and lots of laughter."

Tonight, Tweed, 21, will be able to stay with his new bride thanks to a last-minute intervention by the justice minister, Jack Straw. He is subject to a curfew and wears a tag after a jail sentence for attacking a 16-year-old boy with a golf club. He has been granted a temporary waiver of the curfew.

"They'll be spending the night together here, compliments of Jack Straw," Clifford said. "This is their one night together. It might be their only night together."

The couple, who have booked the entire hotel for the event, now plan to celebrate with a reception that will include a performance by pop trio the Sugababes. They, like many others involved with the event, have donated their services for free.

Fans began clustering outside the hotel gate this morning despite security measures that meant nothing could be seen beyond a driveway and a gaggle of photographers firing off hopeful flash pictures at the darkened window of every car entering.

One bystander, Lyn, who would not give her full name, said she got up at 7am to drive her teenage daughters, Dakota and Courtney, from Colchester in Essex to stand outside the hotel. "It's to support her [Jade]," she said. "I just hope that she can see we're here, that there's people outside who like her and wish the best for her. She's been through a lot."

Angela, another local fan, expressed similar feelings: "I wish we were a bit closer, just to support her, just to show her that people do like her.

"I think she's a young girl who's done really well for herself. She's doing it so her children have got a future."

It is likely to be the final significant public event in a life defined by such exposure. Goody finished only fourth in Big Brother 2002, the event which made her famous, and attracted brutal press mockery for her appearance and supposed ignorance. But clever marketing and her natural manner helped Goody stay in the limelight following the show and earn large sums from public appearances and endorsements.

Five years after Big Brother her public image seemed all but destroyed when Goody joined racially tinged bullying of the Indian film star Shilpa Shetty during a celebrity edition of Big Brother.

While Goody has spoken at length about her cancer, and has had the lead-up to her wedding as well as the ceremony itself filmed for television, she is understood to want to spend her final time quietly with her husband and her sons, aged five and four, from an earlier relationship.

Her actions have brought praise from everyone from cancer charities, which have noted a sudden increase in younger women booking cervical cancer screening tests, to the leader of the English and Welsh Catholic church, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who today called Goody "a brave woman".

"A lot of people might say 'well, it's better if she did everything in quiet'," he told Sky News. "But I think she's made a decision that she wants the last months of her life to teach people something."